Friday, June 19, 2015

From the early 1870s to 1992, Dartmouth senior Class Day ceremonies included the breaking of clay smoking pipes in a symbolic act of separation from the alma mater. If you look around the site of the (second) Old Pine, now a well-varnished stump, you might still find pressed into the earth fragments of these broken clay pipes.

Archaeologists digging at sites within the former British colonies find large numbers of broken pipe stems, which often represent the third most common artifact after pottery sherds and siding nails. Initially imported from England, clay pipes were slowly refined during the 17th and 18th centuries from rather stubby smoking implements measuring about 3” in length to slender and stylish foot-long affairs. The longer stems were attended by narrower holes through which smoke was drawn from the bowl, and therein lies useful information.

In the mid-1950s, Jamestown archaeologist J. C. Harrington published a statistical summary of pipe stem hole diameters and their corresponding date of manufacture. In 1961, Lewis Binford used Harrington’s data to calculate a simple linear regression model to assign an occupation date to archaeological sites using the recovered pipe stems. While only approximate to within twenty years, the dates are easily determined in the field, whereas dates derived from pottery or wood samples require far more analysis and expertise.

Back at Dartmouth's College Park site, of course, there is no reason to date pipe stems. They are all the same design, as far as we know. Their 4/64” diameter replicates those made at the final period of clay pipe evolution, between 1750 and 1800. Scattered among the Dartmouth pipe stem fragments you might also notice some pottery, remnants from two later Class Day ceremonies, after the pipe-breaking tradition was discontinued.

To see photos of pipes from Class Days through the years, come to Rauner and explore our Class Day photo files (or search for them online via keyword at the Dartmouth College Photographic Files database). To see actual clay pipes, ask the desk staff to retrieve them from our uncataloged realia materials.

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

“Abracadabra!” Werner Pfeiffer’s limited edition artists’ book shouts at you in bright red letters from behind its black box encasement. From the outside, Abracadabra (2007) presents the illusion of order: the letters of the title word are arranged neatly in evenly-spaced lines on the cover. But opening the box unleashes the chaos held within: eleven squares of paper each collaged with one letter of “abracadabra” and various geometric images in every font, angle, color, and orientation imaginable. Each page uses simple typographic elements and predetermined geometric shapes, but Pfeiffer rearranges the elements on each page in an abstract and unconventional way. The reader cannot know which way is up and which way is down.

Collage of Abracadabra's first "B"

The letters themselves are disorienting, but the chaos reaches a climax at the bottom of Pfeiffer’s box. There you will find three Flexagon structures mounted with the images of the eleven letters of “abracadabra” from the previous pages. By folding and flexing the structures, the letters magically appear and disappear as they are mixed around into nonsense. Pfeiffer breaks the notion of the “page” and the traditional sequential order of the book by literally slicing the paper into pieces that can be folded and rearranged to disturb and reform the layout of each letter composition and confuse their order. The physical action of flipping letters around forces the reader to deal with the nonlinearity Pfeiffer is imposing upon an otherwise well-ordered word.

A Flexagon

One of Werkman's Druksels

Pfeiffer is consciously playing with the idea of creativity and nonconformity in the face of the order of linguistics and the sequential nature of the traditional book. Abracadabra is a tribute to Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman, a Dutch printer and artist born in 1882 and a resistance fighter during the Nazi regime. He was known for his defiant spirit and his tendency to challenge conventional form. Werkman experimented with traditional printing methods and discovered his own unique techniques. The artist produced many inventive typographic collages called “druksels” which were the basis for Pfeiffer’s book. “Abracadabra,” meaning “nonsense,” was the derogatory label given to Werkman’s work by critics. Pfeiffer took this insult and reversed it to produce a positive, magical representation of the innovation that captured Werkman’s creativity in the face of constraint.